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EDITORIAL: Welcome end to Zupta TV

The demise of the ANN7 television channel serves to show that nothing premised on the deceit of millions can last forever

23 August 2018 - 05:00

Mzwanele Manyi. Picture: ALON SKUY/THE TIMES

It’s poetic justice, isn’t it, that the final broadcast by the Gupta propaganda channel happened on the first day of the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture?

The demise of the ANN7 television channel — recently renamed Afro Worldview — exactly a year after Mzwanele Manyi "bought" it from the repugnant Gupta family serves to show that nothing premised on the deceit of millions can last forever. For years, ANN7 broadcast little more than outright propaganda for the Guptas and former president Jacob Zuma. It didn’t even have the subtlety of state-owned Russia Today.

Today, the unlimited power that the Guptas and their allies in the ANC enjoyed has gone. The New Age newspaper, often as bluntly propagandist as Zimbabwe’s state-owned Herald, folded on June 29, via liquidation at the high court. The Guptas’ mining entities are also gasping for air. Their demise is imminent.

In a jobs-starved economy, it is easy to fall into the trap of mistaking ventures such as these for those that provide genuine employment. The Gupta businesses were anything but — they were vehicles for the extraction of resources from the people for the kleptocrats. They diverted public focus away from the corruption that impoverished the country.

So, good riddance: may there never again be another ANN7 or The New Age.